Monday, April 30, 2012

Free Botox and laser hair removal, free chemical peels and anti-cellulite treatments may at first seem shockingly frivolous in a country like Brazil – which, despite phenomenal economic growth in recent years that has lifted millions out of extreme poverty, still battles with diseases such as tuberculosis and dengue.

But the philosophy behind the more than 220 clinics across Brazil that treat people like Penha and thousands of maids, receptionists, waitresses and others is simple: Beauty is a right, and the poor deserve to be ravishing, too.

The Brazilian Society of Aesthetic Medicine’s Rio clinic has performed free procedures on more than 14,000 patients since its founding in 1997, said Dr. Nelson Rosas, who heads the Rio branch.

Good looks, doctors argue, are more than skin deep, and by treating what patients view as physical flaws doctors are often also healing their psyches.

The notion that beauty treatments can act in much the same way as psychoanalysis, helping free patients from crippling neuroses, was pioneered over thelpast decades by celebrated Brazilian plastic surgeon Ivo Pitanguy.

Nicknamed the “philosopher of plastic surgery” for his intellectual and psychoanalytical take on the vocation, 85-year-old Pitanguy is largely responsible for Brazil’s reputation as a world leader in the field and a top destination for cosmetic surgery tourism.

...

With more than 11.5 million operations a year, Brazil is the world’s second biggest consumer of plastic surgery after the United States, but here there’s none of the kind of stigma that still clings to the practice in the U.S.

Local celebrities appear on the cover of glossy magazines with titles like “Plastica e Beleza,” or “Plastic (Surgery) and Beauty,” and wax poetic about their latest face-lift, breast implant or round of Botox. Actors on the prime time soap operas that captivate the public here regularly get surgical makeovers, as do the characters they play as part of the soaps’ high-drama story lines.

Silicone, on prominent display at the beach here year-round, takes center stage during Carnival, when samba queens wearing only a sprinkling of sequins and feathers flaunt their pumped-up bustlines and gravity-defying rear ends at Rio’s extravagant Sambadrome parade. (Breast and buttock implants are among the most popular plastic surgeries here, along with liposuction, facelifts and procedures to flatten prominent ears).

The senate is currently debating whether the government’s national health service should fully cover breast reconstruction for cancer patients. The state-funded health service already pays for gastroplasties for the morbidly obese and some surgeries to repair serious deformities or injuries, including correcting cleft palates in children.

In 2008, the Obama campaign was arguing for hope and change. This year, the president's re-election campaign is asking Americans to move keep moving forward.

President Obama's campaign on Monday released a seven-minute video entitled "Forward," which they're using to kick off the general election. The video reminds viewers of the dire state of the economy in early 2009, when Mr. Obama took office, and all that the president has accomplished since then -- even in the face of Republican obstruction.

Over images of everyday Americans, the video goes through a laundry list of Mr. Obama's accomplishments: the economic stimulus package he says saved as many as 4.2 million jobs, the end of the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy discriminating against gays in the military, the end of the Iraq war, the changes to regulation of Wall Street and the credit card companies, the auto bailout and more. Over a picture of Mr. Obama, a narrator says, "Hard work, determination, real results."

The video then castigates Republican for their opposition to the president's agenda. "Instead of working together to lift America up, Republicans were waging a campaign to tear the president down," the narrator says as the video shows images of congressional Republicans.

The campaign will play the video during Mr. Obama's first official campaign rallies Saturday in Ohio and Virginia.

He had my favorite flowers delivered with a special note that read, “Meet me outside for a surprise! I love you!” My heart was pounding, I knew this was it! I slowly opened the back door to see a path of rose petals leading to the garden, behind the sheds. I wanted to run to him and yet at the same time I wanted to savor each step, remembering these few seconds forever. I turned the corner to see him surrounded by roses, kneeling down complete with a suit and tie. The combination of the scent of roses and his cologne filled the air, making me dizzy. Then he said the words, the words my heart were waiting for…..

“Will you go to prom with me?”

I had you going didn’t I?

Prom is the new wedding. Boys “promposals” can have as much thought as a marriage proposal, if not more. Girls spend more money on their over-the-top gowns than many of us ever even considered spending on our wedding dresses. Some parents don’t bat an eye at dropping hundreds if not thousands of dollars on limousines, tuxedos, gowns, dinners, hair and makeup, shoes, flowers, and on and on.

I’m not saying there is anything inherently wrong with making prom night special for your child, besides perhaps the possibility of spoiling him or her, but some might argue that is just what these special nights are for. What I am saying is that perhaps this is just one more reflection of what our secular society is accepting as a replacement for the sacrament of marriage.

Read the rest, it's worthy.

Why is marriage now such a turn off for the young?

If you have an idea, leave it in the comments... I'm seriously curious.

He’s a Big Man. I bet there aren’t many 48 year olds who can humiliate kids less than half his age as well as he can.

And this is a Leading and Respected Figure in the American gay community. What do you want to bet there will be deafening silence over this cowardly thug’s behavior?

Dan Savage wins this year’s Son of Ernst Rohm Award for Most Repellent Representative of Gay Community

What’s next, Dan? Punching out little kids to prove your strength? Screaming at shell-shocked vets in hospital to show you aren’t afraid of anybody? Slapping wheelchair bound old women to show you know how to fight like a man?

Utterly, utterly disgusting.

Gay Community: Give me some hope for you guys with a clear and unequivocal condemnation of this disgusting behavior without a bunch of “Well, you have to understand how he’s suffered” rationalization. The man is a disgusting bully. And this isn’t the first time he’s done this.

And yet, despite the multiple instances of this man's corrupt behavior, the White House has been silent.

Sunday, April 29, 2012

Barack Obama has already held more re-election fundraising events than every elected president since Richard Nixon combined, according to figures to be published in a new book.

Obama is also the only president in the past 35 years to visit every electoral battleground state in his first year of office.

The figures, contained a in a new book called The Rise of the President’s Permanent Campaign by Brendan J. Doherty, due to be published by University Press of Kansas in July, give statistical backing to the notion that Obama is more preoccupied with being re-elected than any other commander-in-chief of modern times.

Doherty, who has compiled statistics about presidential travel and fundraising going back to President Jimmy Carter in 1977, found that Obama had held 104 fundraisers by March 6th this year, compared to 94 held by Presidents Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush Snr, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush combined.

Since then, Obama has held another 20 fundraisers, bringing his total to 124. Carter held four re-election fundraisers in the 1980 campaign, Reagan zero in 1984, Bush Snr 19 in 1992, Clinton 14 in 1996 and Bush Jnr 57 in 2004.

Doherty, a political science professor at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, has also analysed presidential travel to battleground or swing states, which change and fluctuate in number with each election cycle.

In their first years in office, Carter visited eight out of 18 battleground states and Reagan seven out of 17. Bush Snr, Clinton and Bush Jnr all visited around three-quarters of battleground states while Obama went to all 15 within his first 12 months.

If you're someone who follows the news superficially, then you'll be agreeing with the headlines and 10 to 20 second snippets reporting on how the Vatican is beating up on Nuns... but if you want to have some intellectual integrity, you owe yourself the favor of going deeper... so here's something you could do... read what follows from Elizabeth Scalia (in the Wall Street Journal no less), who I know as The Anchoress, and who played a pivotal role in my return to The Church of my roots... the piece sheds much needed light and you my friend can move forward and perhaps even defend The Church from a perspective of knowledge and critical thought... rather than meekly accepting the agenda driven drivel being foisted on the gullible by the left and their psychophantic minions in the media:

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's first duty is to assure that the doctrines of the church are being accurately reflected and communicated to the church body by those canonically representing the faith. Yet its criticisms could not have surprised the sisters, many of whom acknowledge that their communities are "out of step" with Rome.

On the eve of the Vatican's doctrinal investigation in 2009, Sister Sandra M. Schneiders published a letter to her Leadership Conference associates in which she sounded loaded for bear. Declaring that her community and others had "birthed a new form of religious life," she referred to the Vatican's attempt at assessment as "a hostile move" and one that would do "violence" to all that newness.

Not all sisters have been as combative. Two years earlier, in a thoughtful presentation that some believe spurred the investigation, then-Leadership Conference president Sister Laurie Brink had acknowledged that while many sisters walked unevenly with Rome, some had moved "beyond the church, even beyond Jesus." She called that a post-Christian mind-set that might ethically require those who held it to leave the church.

That assessment by Sister Brink was quoted in the Congregation's findings, but the document says nothing ill of Sister Brink. Rather, it worries that post-Christian mind-sets too often "go unchallenged" by the Leadership Conference—that it is falling down on the job of bringing Christian witness to its own members. While Sister Brink's work provides "a phenomenological snapshot of religious life today," says the document, "pastors should also see in it a cry for help."

Such a portrait of helplessness was no doubt not welcomed by all and may even seem condescending to well-educated women who have been effective and mostly autonomous in their work. But concern is not the same as condescension, and there is an unmistakably pastoral tone permeating the entire assessment. Rome clearly sees a sign of spiritual distress in the fact that some sisters (albeit a minority) have moved away from doctrine as basic as the Apostles Creed.

A couple of days ago, Obama campaign top dog David Axelrod threw in the towel on the dog war. "I thought it was a little absurd to talk about what the President had done as a 10-year-old boy," he sniffed to MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell, which is as near as the suddenly sheepish attack dog will ever get to conceding that Barack Obama is the first dog-eating president in the history of the Republic. For those coming late to the feud, the Democrats started it, assiduously promoting accounts of a 1983 Romney vacation to Canada in which the family pooch Seamus rode on the roof of the car. Axelrod and the boys thought they could have some sport with this, and their poodles in the media eagerly played along. The New York columnist Gail Collins alone has referred to it dozens of times.

And then Jim Treacher, the sharp-eyed wag of The Daily Caller, uncovered this passage from Chapter Two of Obama's bestselling but apparently largely unread memoir "Dreams From My Father," in which the author recalls childhood meals with his stepfather, Lolo Soetoro:

"I was introduced to dog meat (tough), snake meat (tougher), and roasted grasshopper (crunchy). Like many Indonesians, Lolo followed a brand of Islam that could make room for the remnants of more ancient animist and Hindu faiths. He explained that a man took on the powers of whatever he ate: One day soon, he promised, he would bring home a piece of tiger meat for us to share."

There followed an Internet storm of "I Ate A Dog (And I Liked It)" gags. Axelrod, an early tweeter of Romney doggie digs, has now figured out that the subject is no longer profitable for his boss. The dogs he let slip aren't quite that savvy. Jeremy Funk, communications director of "Americans United For Change," is still bulk-emailing links to the dogsagainstromney.com video "Should We Have A President Who Isn't Even Qualified To Adopt A Pet?" Confronted by the revelation that his preferred candidate only swings by the Humane Society for the all-you-can-eat buffet, he huffs that this is "false equivalence." "A 6-year-old with no choice in the matter" is not the same as a grown man choosing to place his dog on the roof of his vehicle. My Canadian compatriot Kate McMillan, a dog breeder, advised Mr. Funk to "try this experiment – sit a normal, American 6-year-old down at a plate and tell him it's dog meat. Watch what happens."

For their next exploding cigar, the Democrats chose polygamy. Brian Schweitzer, the Democrat governor of Montana, remarked that Romney was unlikely to appeal to women because his father was "born on a polygamy commune." Eighty-six percent of women, noted Gov. Schweitzer with a keenly forensic demographic eye, are "not great fans of polygamy." You can understand the 86 percent's ickiness at the whole freaky-weirdy idea of a president descended from someone who had multiple wives. Eww.

Just for the record, Romney's father was not a polygamist; Romney's grandfather was not a polygamist; his great-grandfather was a polygamist. Miles Park Romney died in 1904, so one can see why this would weigh heavy on 86 percent of female voters 108 years later.

Meanwhile, back in the female-friendly party, Obama's father was a polygamist; his grandfather was a polygamist; and his great-grandfather was a polygamist who had one more wife (five in total) than Romney's great-grandfather. It seems President Obama is the first male in his line not to be a polygamist. So, given the "gender gap," maybe those 86 percent of American women are way cooler with polygamy than Gov. Schweitzer thinks. Maybe these liberal chicks really dig it.

Saturday, April 28, 2012

Most Americans desire a fair and just outcome of this tragedy. But, Lord help us if the evidence proves Zimmerman to be innocent. If Zimmerman is ruled not-guilty and allowed to walk, I foresee Rodney King-type riots in the streets. Thus, is Zimmerman's fate already sealed? Will a jury decide Zimmerman must be declared guilty of something?

While Al Sharpton, New Black Panthers and all of the other racist race-hustling usual suspects clamor for justice for Trayvon Martin, I wonder if justice is even possible for George Zimmerman.

Will political correctness ensure that Zimmerman be found guilty of something regardless of the evidence?

Tragically and frighteningly, we live in a time in which the law and truth appears to be losing relevance in America.

For example. Clearly, the individual mandate in Obamacare is unconstitutional. And yet, Obama believes he can bully the Supreme Court to rule in his favor because "he" believes the mandate is a good thing. Ponder that folks, the president is pressuring U.S. Supreme Court justices to bend the truth and the law to suit his desires. Obama, the president who would be King.

For years, Democrats have been trying to abort the thorn-in-the-side stumbling block to their socialistic agenda known as the U.S. Constitution. Who could have imagined deceiving the American people into putting a black Trojan Horse extreme left liberal into the Oval Office would "Git-r-done"?

If Obama successfully forces U.S. Supreme Court justices to succumb to his politically correct interpretation of the law and rule Obamacare constitutional, setting such a precedence could mean so-called "white Hispanic" George Zimmerman is toast. It would mean facts, truth and the law are no longer relevant — only what the people/mob want rules the day.

Regardless if the evidence proves otherwise, Zimmerman will be found guilty of "something" to avoid riots in the streets. We are talking political correctness on steroids.

Folks, I am not saying Zimmerman is innocent. I do not know. I am simply saying in these morally bankrupt times in which we live, I am concerned that facts and truth are becoming irrelevant.

I'm continuously amazed at the positions some are taking on this tragedy.

One person I know seems to be basing their entire perspective on the basis of the loss felt by Trayvon's parents. Time and again, their opinions are prefaced with comments about how they would be feeling if their child had been Trayvon. An understandable position from a myopic perspective as I'm absolutley positive that the loss is painfully unbearable.

But what if their child was George Zimmerman? How might they then be feeling about it all?

Differently I would hope as I'm sure the presumption of Zimmerman's guilt would likely then be replaced by a presumption of innocence that any decent and God fearing parent would have about their own. And I guess that's the point of my bemusement as to their perspective. Zimmerman too has parents. Zimmerman's parents are watching their child be described by the media and by those with an agenda as a person they know he is not. Zimmerman's parents are watching their son's life turn upside down and know that things will never again be the same for him or for themselves.

Will justice be served in all this?

I know and trust truth will win out in the end, I hope simply that it wins out in the here and now. The circumstances however are such that this is highly in doubt.

That's the question asked by RC2 at Wheat & Weeds after watching Congressman Trey Gowdy of South Carolina completely befuddle Kathleen Sebelius on foundational questions. Her responses are embarrasing.

One thing this does point out is that this, once it comes before the Supreme Court... and it will, should completely be overturned and I hope, when it happens, that the Supreme Court is unmerciful in its judgment as to the arrogance and the overreach of those who brought us to this point.

Friday, April 27, 2012

There has been a second firing at NBC over the misleading edit of George Zimmerman's 911 call. A report published yesterday afternoon by the Miami Herald identifies reporter/producer Jeff Burnside as the individual responsible for the edits which appeared in an NBC6 news story on March 19th and again on March 20th.

Burnside's social media accounts show he was heavily involved in the Trayvon Martin story beginning on March 19th. The next day he interviewed one of Zimmerman's neighbors at the scene of the shooting. The story he wrote to accompany the interview (since corrected) is one of the two places the misleading edit appeared. In the original version Burnside quotes from the Zimmerman 911 call with a misleading ellipsis, "This guy looks like he’s up to no good…he looks black." On March 22nd Burnside posted this photoof himself interviewing Al Sharpton who was in Florida for a Trayvon Martin rally. He also attended a rally with Ben Jealous of the NAACP.

Burnside's story containing the misleading edit was picked up by MSNBC and a lightly revised version was published the next day, March 21st. The MSNBC version of the story has also been corrected but it was this story which caught the eye of a conservative blogger at Curses! Foiled Again!. The misleading edit he pointed out was picked up by Dan Riehlhere at Breitbart News and within a few days edit-gate had become national news and an embarrassment to NBC brass.

Then, three weeks ago, NBC announced that, after an internal investigation, they had fired a Miami based producer responsible for the misleading edit which appeared on the Today Show. That individual still has not been identified but is not Jeff Burnside. Burnside apparently did not work on the Today Show and was only responsible for the (identical) edits that appeared at NBC6 and MSNBC.

It's not clear how two different editors working on separate print and video stories made the exact same misleading edit. NBC has not offered anything like a detailed explanation.

Here's all the detailed explanation one needs.

An agenda was being foisted by those who knew there'd be plenty of folks who'd buy the lie.

Period.

Two people fired over what's taken place in this entire thing isn't enough. More heads ought to roll.